As it is well known cellular phones present a tremendous advantage in dealing with an emergency situation. For this reason a large percentage of automobiles are now equipped with these phones. However, there are several problems with present cellular phone systems. The primary one is that the owner must pay a monthly charge to maintain the use of a number. A secondary one is that the phones present a theft risk. The third problem is that the usage is so convenient that one can very easily run up large bills. Thus, while people tend to buy a cellular phone for emergency use they will often end up spending a significantly larger amount of money on the monthly charges than have been planned.
A number of expensive solutions for emergency cellular phones have been proposed. Grimes (U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,479,482 and 5,388,147) and Moore (U.S. Pat. No. 5,334,974) teach a cellular phone connected to a positioning system such as a GPS or Loran. The other art deals with cellular phones that are restricted to calling 911. These include Zicker (U.S. Pat. No. 5,465,388) and Seiderman (U.S. Pat. No. 5,388,148)--although Seiderman also teaches an integrated credit card reader. Other art covers what might be called "children's" restricted phones. The patent of Boubelik (U.S. Pat. No. 5,365,570) has a mechanical lock over the keyboard to restrict the use to an emergency call button. The art of Bogusz et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,203,009) and the SOS Phone (product of SOS wireless communications of 3000 Airway Avenue, Costa Mesa, Calif. 92626) restrict the phone to only being able to call two different sites. These could be, for example 911 and home or 911 and a towing company.
The patent of Bishop et al (U.S. Pat. No. 5,563,931) assigned to SOS teaches an emergency phone which requires modifications to the phone company equipment. These modifications would allow the call to bypass the normal cellular call process (col 10 lines 10-13) and to accept specialized numbers including a "pseudo area code" (col 19, lines 14-19). There is no economy in these inventions. For example, the SOS Phone requires the activation of an access service ($99 per year) and thus the phone saves no money per month. In fact, most cellular companies will give away a full function phone for free if one pays the monthly service.
Thus one would have a more economical and broader function phone by simply signing up for the cheapest monthly service and having the discipline to never use the phone except for an emergency. Unfortunately, few people have that level of discipline or control over third parties that might need the phone. Thus there is a need for an economical and durable disposable emergency cellular phone that can be operated without the need to pay a monthly access fee.